Academic Planning Campus Conversations November 28

12:30pm, Candelaria Room 1100

6 people attending
5 attended Round 1
5 attended Round 2

Build and support a campus environment characterized by inclusive decision-making, dialogue, shared governance, diversity, and respect for all members of the University.

  • Will be hard to write objectives
  • What does inclusion mean?
  • Respect – let’s measure that
  • If it’s not measurable, we can’t assess
  • BS – Eliminate
  • It’s free
  • You can measure number of complaints (i.e., racial harassment complaints in dorms)
  • Includes things that aren’t parallel
  • Hoping diversity would be a separate category

Recruit and retain high-quality faculty, staff and administrators.

  • Enhance compensation
  • In order to recruit and retain, compensation has to be competitive
  • To talk about quality of faculty, must address tenure numbers
  • Must recruit/retain students, too (should be broken down)
    • Dangerous to emphasize retention (goal is to educate students)
    • I’d like to think retention is about keeping good students here
  • I like the order (of faculty, staff, administration)

Build, improve, and maintain university facilities and infrastructure appropriate to our academic mission and functions.

  • Need buildings
  • So far beyond our reach – other things more important in short run
  • Important – some classrooms embarrassing; this does need to be addressed
  • This is more beyond our power to address
  • This type of goal/projects too easily replace more important ones

Make teaching learning, scholarship/creative activity, and service the core of the university.

  • Meaningless; an empty platitude
  • Stating the obvious
  • As opposed to what?  Athletics?
  • CTF: Teaching/learning was never the focus
  • “At the core of the University” – I’d only support if greater percentage of budget went to instruction
  • For whom?  Responsibility of faculty?  Of students?
  • First impression:  disdain for faculty (it’s not sometimes an “December 1, 2006ge climate
    • Others argue that you can

Provide high-quality co-curricular learning experiences for all students.

  • What is a co-curricular learning experience?
  • Seems that what we’re after is more holistic experience of students

Create broad-based and sustainable financial resources within an environment of transparency that supports the academic plan.

  • That is the most subordinate means to… (like saying need to balance checkbook to do financial planning)
  • Transparency should go without saying
  • This one has the most empty words

Build an institutional identity and reputation for academic excellence.

  • We don’t just want reputation – we want to embrace academic excellence
  • To improve quality of education, you must address admission standards (we don’t talk about rigor)
    • (Shoot for CU/CSU index)
  • How do we want UNC to look?

Cultivate external partnerships and relationships in support of academic excellence and community engagement.

  • That’s a means to an end – it’s a tactic
  • Add “where appropriate”

QUESTIONS/COMMENTS:
Need only 3 goals:

  1. Enhance compensation
  2. Increase percentage of tenure track faculty
  3. Raise admission standards (all measurable)

“maybe these are objectives, not goals”
[some agreement that these are objectives]

“fear” that more general goal =  more latitude to interpret it

8 is way too big

3 goals (above) don’t address why

Is there an ideal of what UNC should look like?

Revision of 3 goals (above)

  1. Staffing
  2. Academic programs
  3. Student demographics (admission, graduate rate)

Diversity – if we don’t even know what’s going on, how can we address it?
Students have no way to complain
Include GLBT issues

NEXT SEMESTER

  • Do the Bookman survey again (students/studying time)
  • Get hard financial estimate for cost of bringing up faculty salaries to match peers, address admission standards, number of tenure track positions
  • Possible to get input on objectives goal-by-goal so people can choose (involve students then, too)
  • Concerned about legitimacy of decision-making mechanism.  Fewer sessions (less cacophony of voices) to get input; draft something; vote
  • [Is it too controlling to come to you with numbers?] I think that’s the way to go
  • We need more concrete things to argue about (reduce number of goals)
  • Process has been nice so far – people perceive openness